Title: Something Unpredictable (Chapter 1/?)

Rating/Warnings: G (for now), Mpreg

Pairing: Jack/Ianto

Description: Jack finds himself with a 51st century predicament in a 21st century world.

A/N: Thank you for all the support and interest in my ongoing series! Here comes the first chapter. Enjoy.

Chapter 1

Inner plans averted. Any prospects Jack had to meet with Owen were replaced by the rift letting off its siren and putting four-fifths of the team on its toes. Jack, on the other hand, was noticeably relieved. He seemed to bounce off the balls of his feet just for the opportunity to get out of the Hub and kick some alien tail. While he knew very well what he should do, it was still a matter of actually doing it.

So it was nothing short of a downer for him when the team drove thirty miles outside of Cardiff to discover that it was merely a traveling circus of lost extraterrestrials. According to the story, they had apparently taken a wrong turn on their way to the planet Cybonex, a perfectly moderate place and not all that different from Earth, if you ignored the minor fact that it was three times the size.

Jack had identified them as the Vreemds right off the bat, an advanced species that could automatically decode and translate any spoken language, including primitive 21st century English, thankfully. Long story short, they were harmless. Jack had even offered them back for coffee, but they refused politely and disappeared back into the galaxies once they'd gotten what they wanted.

Truth be told, Jack had secretly hoped that he could have thrown himself at another Abaddon and saved the world a couple of times, just to take his mind off the inevitable.

The team returned back to the Hub twenty minutes later. Ianto, Gwen, and Tosh put down their work to grab lunch, and Owen stayed behind to dissect a case study from the night before. It was a cold day in Hell when neither of the men could keep their food and drinks down, though for entirely different reasons. Jack paced his office for a couple of minutes before he took the liberty of stepping into the archives.

It was boring, but it was something to do. Besides, it would save Ianto from one extra thing in his day. Frankly, he barely wanted the younger man around now. It only presented the opportunity for Jack to rip off his clothes at any given moment of the day. While that hardly seemed so bad, Ianto stood in the way of a lot of work, and he was conceivably the man that got him into this mess in the first place.

But this, this archiving was more tedious than he had remembered. Jack wasn't nearly as efficient as Ianto, and more likely than not, the younger man would have to backtrack most of Jack's work. Jack still attempted to document each measly detail after another, even down to one of the male Vreemds asking, rather inappropriately, where they kept their "additional opposable phallic manipulator underneath their thin layer of skin." Jack assumed that one was simply going through puberty as he was given a proper zap from one of the elder alien's metallic canes.

The minutes passed by in empty silence, and Jack typed out as much as he could remember before his fingers became limp and unresponsive. His mind soon moved into another world, and he found one of his hands drifting on to his lip.

"Your condition has turned you sentimental," Kavin smiled easily, his fingers grazing over Jack's bare arms. Goosebumps appeared instantly. Jack smiled as he let out a sigh. He was four months along, but there were barely remnants of anything there, especially lying flat on his back.

"All I'm saying is this. I want you to live with me, all the way."

Kavin's eyebrows arched as he turned against his lover and spread his arm across his bare chest. "Like a proper family?"

Jack thought about that one for a few moments before feeling a microscopic smile crack at his lips. "Sure, if that's what you want to call it."

Kavin smiled more before resting his weight against his elbow and dragging his fingers along Jack's chest, his eyes fixed on his. Jack finally resigned and let out a loud, emphatic sigh.

"All right! All right, yes, a family. But don't think we're house husbands! And I don't do dinner. Or cleaning, or bed making. And I definitely don't do gardening." Jack grinned despite his words, and Kavin smiled back, getting pulled into a kiss. He added half-heartedly, "And I won't be cleaning your clothes in my delicate state either."

The Captain's eyes flickered slightly before he snapped back into reality. He noticed then that his throat was parched, though he blamed the musty archives – really, it was a miracle Ianto hadn't come down with something after all these years. Perhaps he'd grown immune to it. He made a mental note to ask Owen to do a full exam of each of the team members some day.

Before he retreated, he revealed a piece of paper from a side drawer and jotted down notes for Ianto of what he had done and what the younger man had left to do. Once he returned to the Main Hub, he washed his hands and poured himself a glass of water, reveling in the calm silence. The rest of his team still hadn't returned back yet, he knew what he had to do.

He crossed his arms as he walked around the gallery of Owen's medical room, though he stalked quietly, not wanting to startle the doctor. As he made it around, he began with small talk, analyzing the case study and only mildly wanting to regurgitate. For now.

"How's it going?" Jack asked, trailing his eyes toward the ceiling. Just the sheer smell was arguing with him. Couldn't he spray some damn air freshener? Owen glanced up at him, various medical instruments in his hand.

"Peachy keen, to the looks of it, except we've got a right mess."

Jack looked back at the cadaver and back to Owen. "That's your analysis? Thanks, I hadn't noticed. It's disgusting."

Owen raised his eyebrows quickly, looking back at his Captain expectantly, before his voice turned low and gravelly. "You act like you've never seen a dead guy before."

Jack opened his mouth to say something, but he firmly closed it. They spoke the same language: immortal. "Touché."

Both men smiled in their own little way before Jack shifted his weight and began to slowly pace around the medical table. Owen tended to the body like a man working on a car, freely talking above the mess. "So did you need anything? I'm a little tied up now to make coffee, and there's a Starbucks around the corner, lest you forget."

"No, it isn't that." Jack nearly hesitated, but it was now or never. "I need you in my office, if at all possible, in five minutes."

Owen looked up then, his eyes narrowing, but he agreed to it slowly. "I'm all done here; I just have to clean up. I'll see you in a minute."

Jack bowed his head in response before turning back on his leg and walking toward his office. He nearly stopped for coffee, but he hesitated the moment his stomach gave a little gurgle. The water barely agreed with him now, let alone java, nor was the caffeine good for his condition. He kept walking and eventually planted himself into his chair, sitting back as he mentally phrased all that he was about to say.

Owen Harper was a man of his word. Five minutes later, he appeared at his doorway, stripped of his medical coat. Jack stood up to his feet and closed the door behind him before offering him the seat across from him.

"You know, even if you wanted to resort to buggery, Harkness, I'm already dead."

Jack snorted quietly and sat back down into his chair, wheeling himself in. He could resort to more small talk, but the rest could return at any minute, so he cut right to the case. "Owen, what I'm about to tell you stays in this room. You can't tell Gwen or Tosh or even Ianto. I need you to listen, first and foremost."

Owen matured five years in the span of five seconds as he nodded his head and sat up straighter in the chair. "Okay, shoot."

Jack pressed his lips together for a moment before starting right from the beginning. Granted, the cliff notes version. "In the 51st century, this medical agency called LifeSmart had finally 'perfected' the so-called male pregnancy solution."

Owen's fingers gripped around the handles of the chair slightly more, but he didn't say anything, only nodding.

"It was less of a medical breakthrough than you think, but it wasn't a perfect science. I volunteered right out the gate. The operation was a non-intrusive lasic transplant that lasted minutes, literally, and don't even question it. One of my partners at the time was as willing to go with it as I was, so he took the right vitamins and the specific enzymatic supplements to help along with the process. I was monitored on a regular basis to see my progress, which went smoothly in the beginning."

He was interrupted right there. Owen had a lot to process, and he wore that classic look of confusion on his brow and jaw, his body tilted to the side. "Wait, so you were actually for-the-history-books up the duff?"

Not quite the way Jack would have phrased it, but he nodded his head. When he opened his mouth to say more, Owen still gave him the same look of confusion, mixed with fascination and bewilderment; as if he wanted to cut him open with his scalpel at any moment.

"Owen…"

Owen snapped out of it just then, waving his hand. "Anyway, sorry, go on…"

"Yeah," Jack said slower than he intended to. He knew no better way to go on with the information without becoming redundant, so he just let the cat out of the bag. "I miscarried in my twenty-eighth week. The obstetricians basically told me that my body was rejecting the fetus because of an under dose of prenatal vitamins. Ingenious 51st century technology and they… they underestimated."

"I'm sorry," Owen said quietly and sincerely. Jack nodded his head, a touch passive, having lost so many. He knew, even if he'd given birth, the child wouldn't even be alive today, not even after all the time traveling in the world. This fact alone was sobering, to say the least.

The room grew quiet for a good minute or two, both men unaware of what to tell each other. Jack half expected Owen to put the pieces together for him, while Owen hoped Jack would chalk it all down to life wisdom and leave it at that. Jack was enough of a proud, tyrant bitch without the addition of sore ankles and a growing fetus.

When it became clear neither of them knew what to say to each other, Jack finally stood up and walked around his desk to speak closer to the doctor sitting down in front of him.

"I need you to run a few tests, the sooner the better. Look, I don't know how it happened; I don't see how it could have, at least not here. Not in this century, not on this earth. Hell, the air quality isn't even the same; the supplements haven't even been invented for another five thousand years. Nothing adds up."

For once, Owen decided to take the rational route. He spoke clearly and deliberately as he looked up at Jack. "Do you think you're jumping the gun too soon, Jack? Couldn't it be a million other things? Isn't pregnancy a little… out there?"

Jack turned his eyes away from Owen and shook his head. He half-expected that response from a 21st century man with 21st century medicine and pre-21st century medical books. But Jack wasn't ready to explain the entire medical development in the span of three thousand years.

So Jack left it perfectly simple. "No. No, this is… I know this feeling."

Owen continued to choose his words carefully. He could barely believe he was having this conversation. "So assuming you are, or could be, would Ianto be the…?"

Jack simply nodded. Unless he was bitten in the arm by another Nostrovite, highly unlikely for any number of reasons (including the fact that he wasn't bit from anything, aside from a Myfanwy nip, to which case he had bigger problems under his hand if the pterodactyl was a child implanting alien), it had to be Ianto's. He wasn't nearly as freewheeling as people assumed.

The silenced washed over them again, only broken by one of Jack's long, drawn out sighs. "I'll send the others home early, ballpark figure around seven o'clock, unless the earth explodes. Would you mind staying to…?"

Owen shook his head quickly. Honestly, he never thought he'd ever have to give his boss, whether equipped with a cock or a twat, a bloody scan, but he was man enough to do it. "No, not at all, you've got it, Captain."

Jack smiled softly and nodded his head, patting the clearly tense man on the shoulder. "And thank you." Owen nodded. "Go on, cut up some more cadavers like a good doctor."

The younger man cracked a smile and retreated from Jack's office, his head still swimming around the facts, though male pregnancy hardly seemed as strange in light of the fact that he, himself, was the walking dead. At the thought of that, Owen sobered up and kept walking toward his medical room.

There was a Torchwood baby on the way, and God help the universe, Ianto Jones could be someone's father.